First-time home buyers like Taoyuan

MOVING ON UP:Realtors say high housing prices in Taipei, anticipation Taoyuan will become a special municipality and the planned MRT line to the airport caused the rise

Staff writer, with CNA

An increasing number of first-time home buyers in northern Taiwan are looking for housing in Taoyuan County amid inflationary pressure in the country and ever-rising housing prices in Taipei, realtors said yesterday.

With many viewing real estate as a safe bet to overcome inflation and house prices in Taipei having recently jumped to a record NT$800,000 (US$27,117) per ping (3.3m2), compared with an -average of NT$550,000 a year earlier, first-time home buyers in northern Taiwan are increasingly turning to Taoyuan as a destination for home purchases, according to statistics provided by online property service HouseFun (好房網).

Between 30 and 40 percent of housing in Taoyuan is now being purchased by first-time home buyers from New Taipei City (新北市), HouseFun said.

The realtor attributed the rise to anticipation that Taoyuan will -become the country’s sixth special municipality, along with a mass rapid transit (MRT) system from Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport to Taipei expected to be completed in between two and five years.

The realtor’s Web site showed that Taoyuan recorded the highest growth among major metropolises in Taiwan in the number of people looking for housing in the area, with 39.71 percent growth last month compared with the same month of last year.

However, Taiwan Realty Co (台灣房屋) spokeswoman Ni Pei-ching (倪培青) said that the housing market around the country in general for the first quarter of this year was not as strong as last year.

The home purchase ratio for the first quarter of this year stood at 0.9 percent, down 0.64 percentage points from the same period of last year, she said.

Taiwan Realty Co manager Chang Kai-ti (張凱帝) said housing purchases for principal residences accounted for 70 percent of the total in Taoyuan, indicating that property investment was not the main purpose behind housing -purchases in the area.

Despite the growing trend of residents of Taipei looking for housing in Taoyuan, HouseFun said that strong housing supply there might lower prices in the area.

Housing supply in Hsinchu County topped the list in Taiwan last month, followed by Greater Kaohsiung and Taoyuan, HouseFun statistics showed.

Separately, Sinyi Realty Inc (信義房屋), one of Taiwan’s leading real-estate agencies, is planning to recruit about 1,000 staff in central and southern Taiwan.

The real-estate broker said on Friday it had scheduled a job fair for Saturday in Greater Taichung and another in Greater Kaohsiung for May 26 to recruit employees.

According to a survey conducted by Sinyi Realty earlier this month, about 70 percent of students polled in eight universities in Taiwan want to work for real-estate agencies.

The agency said the new recruits would be guaranteed a monthly salary of NT$50,000 in the first six months of employment.

If employees were willing to work in a city away from their household registration locations, they would be offered an additional NT$10,000 during the six-month period, the company said.

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